Serving on Montana's Gaming Advisory Council must seem like pretty tame duty to a guy like Bob McAnally.
Working through the often mundane issues surrounding gambling policy cannot compare to being "the guy in the yellow shirt" directing take-offs and landings of multi-million dollar aircraft on the heaving deck of a carrier in the midst of combat over two tours in Vietnam.
Nevertheless, he accepted an appointment to the council by Atty. Gen. Mike McGrath last summer, representing the interests and perspective of the state's Indian tribes.
At the time, McGrath said, "Bob brings an important perspective to the Council. He has been involved in tribal gaming issues for a long time. He will be very helpful as the Council deals with the complex issues surrounding state/tribal compacts."
The Poplar native was born on the Fort Peck Reservation and has lived there since with the exception of his time in military service and university education. He graduated from Poplar High School in 1967.
He attended Montana State University before military duty, then attended Flathead Valley Community College and earned an associate's degree in human services. Later, he studied social work at the University of Montana before transferring to Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he earned a bachelor's in community development.
He was also instrumental in the founding of the Fort Peck Community College (FPCC) which was launched in 1978. McAnally began serving as its first president in 1979.
For awhile during that time he was a co-owner with two brothers of a billiards parlor in Poplar called Mac's Bank Shot.
"I decided that wasn't what I wanted to do so then I went to law school," he says. He earned a law degree from the University of Montana in 1988.
Soon after he was named the first in-house counsel for the Fort Peck Tribes. In 1990 he began teaching at FPCC and was later named vice-president for student services, and finally vice-president for academics.
McAnally also served as the tribe's gaming commission legal counsel, becoming a certified Indian Gaming Commissioner.
Just recently he went back into teaching full-time with a focus on federal Indian law, Indian studies, criminal law and civil procedures at the paralegal level.
McAnally is quick to point out that representing all the tribes of the state isn't easy.
The public and state government "need to remember that all tribes are different; we all have different needs, different economies. So a 'cookie-cutter' approach may not work."
But McAnally also says a best case scenario would involve the tribes approaching the Legislature in unison to seek--and win--sovereign jurisdiction over, and expansion of, gaming on their reservations.
"That would be the best for a lot of people," McAnally says.
McAnally says he believes the tribes should be able to run a wide array of Class III activities--so called "casino" games--such as blackjack, roulette, craps and slots, regulating gambling for tribally owned enterprises, and gaming businesses operated by tribal and non-tribal members on the reservation.
Currently the Fort Peck Tribes operates it's own facility with about 30 machines and vends another 50 or so video keno and poker machines to tribal member operators on a shared revenue basis--60 percent to the tribe and 40 percent to the operator. He said he thinks non-tribal operators on the reservation have about 200 state-licensed machines.
Tribes are entitled to advantages under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, McAnally says, though understands when legislators "get nervous when their constituents see a proposal as a one-sided compact."
McAnally said Fort Peck tribal representatives recently attended a meeting in Helena with members of the Administration and with representatives of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes for a "get-to-know-you type of meeting." He acknowledges that within the month the Fort Peck Tribes will notify state officials that they are ready to renegotiate the current Class III gaming compact with the state.
Under federal law, tribes cannot operate Class III gaming without a negotiated compact in place with the state.
In late 2006, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation let it's Class III compact with the state expire when the state would not accede to its demands for total jurisdiction over all gaming on the reservation, including regulation of non-tribal operators which the state regulates.
Thus, all Class III gaming on the reservation, tribal and non-tribal, came to an end and hundreds of machines were switched off, moved or moth-balled.
Now the CS&KT is attempting to make a go of strictly Class II gaming, which is considered to be "traditional" games such as bingo and raffles, though the tribe is operating video machines that play just like Class III slots (and are even advertised that way) but have been found by courts to be technically a form of bingo.
McAnally says the state should consider negotiating more liberal compacts with the tribes, especially since the tribes have expressed a willingness to discuss revenue sharing options with the state--"a 10 to 15 percent rake," McAnally says, much like what has been done in California. Those proposals "didn't get off the ground very well" though, he says.
"We want government-to-government agreements, just like we have with law enforcement, water, liquor, cigarettes," McAnally says. "It could be a win/win where the state gets a revenue share, and the tribes get new jobs and revenue to provide services for its people." All reservation businesses would prosper as a consequence, McAnally says.
He also says tribes need to start paying more attention to "gambling's dark side"--destructive compulsive gambling. "But we don't have the money" to launch treatment programs, he says.
As far as the Gaming Advisory Council goes, McAnally says he isn't approaching his service with any sort of "mission."
y job is to pay attention and learn, address the issues in a fair and equitable manner. I will also be working to get the council to understand the tribal viewpoints. I will be an energetic participant.
"The Gaming Council is an amazing organization. The state needs to rely on it more."
The next new member to take a seat on the council will be Sen. Lane Larson (D-Billings). Larson' appointment will begin after the March 4 GAC meeting when Sen. Joe Tropila of Great Falls ends his term on the council.
The GAC was created in 1989 to study all aspects of gambling in Montana, to review and comment on administrative rules proposed by the Department of Justice's Gambling Control Division and to make recommendations to the department and the legislature on gambling-related matters.
The council is made up of nine members: one each from the Senate and the House of Representatives, one public member, two local government representatives, one Native American representative and three gaming industry representatives.
Leaders of the Montana House and Senate select the legislators while the attorney general appoints the other council members.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, February, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701..